


You Must Remember This

by wicked3659



Category: due South
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Growing Old, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Long-Term Relationship(s), M/M, Memories, POV First Person, Phone Calls & Telephones, Post-Canon, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:27:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26287201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wicked3659/pseuds/wicked3659
Summary: Ray Kowalski-Fraser and Ray Vecchio call each other the same day every year.
Relationships: Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski, Ray Kowalski & Ray Vecchio
Comments: 18
Kudos: 40





	You Must Remember This

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry.  
> I'm going through some stuff. I'm sad. Sad fic happened.  
> Not beta'd.

Sitting out on my porch, I open my beer and lift up my phone. The number is on my speed dial so I just have to press the green light. It rings a few times as it always does. He always knows it’s me.

“Stanley!” I grin and take a sip of my beer. 

“Style Pig.” 

I laugh and ease back into my chair, enjoying the warm Florida night. “How’s it been?” 

“Cold, Vecchio.” I can practically hear his smirk over the phone. “And dark. Just like it is every December.” 

“Right right. That’s what you get for being in the ass end of nowhere, Kowalski.”

He huffs a laugh. “Better than being in a sweaty armpit with you.” 

“Touche. You get up to much today?” I ask, hoping he’s kept himself busy. 

“Yeah, it was cool. Maggie brought her kids over, we played with the dogs until it got too cold and then had hot chocolate and watched a movie in the cabin.” 

“How’s the sled racing?” I ask, smiling when he launches into telling me all about his current batch of pups, some of which are Diefenbaker’s progeny. I know he’s especially proud of those. The dogs are like family to him. It’s good that he has them I think to myself. “You ever fancy being warm around Christmas and spending time with actual humans, my door is always open,” I tease him. He never minds. 

“How’s Stella?” 

“She’s good, busy. You and me we take it easy in our retirement, sled racing, bowling. She practically runs her own charity. Woman is a force of nature.” 

Kowalski laughs. “Yeah, I did try to warn you.” 

We fall quiet and it’s a comfortable quiet. He always knows I’m going to ask and he never shies away from it but he knows I gotta ask. There’s a reason we call this day every year for the last five years. I used to call more often but he likes to keep busy, not stay in the cabin too much especially during the summer months and I get that. I really do. “You got a glass?” I ask finally. 

“Yeah, small one, the good stuff,” he says quietly. 

“To Benny.”

“Happy birthday, Ben,” he replies. 

“Sixty huh?” 

Kowalski lets out a soft laugh. “Yeah, he would’ve hated it. Probably would have had some kind of midlife crisis about getting old or some shit.” 

“That he would’ve,” I laugh with him and take a drink. “Five years, it’s gone fast.” 

He’s quiet for a few moments. “Do you believe in ghosts?” he asks me seriously and I know it’s serious because he doesn’t swear. 

“Never really thought about it, I suppose so. Why?” 

“Sometimes…” he pauses and takes a deep breath. “Like when I’m tending the dogs, or watching TV or just minding my own business, talking to the pups, I get this feeling…” he pauses. 

“Oh?” I prompt. I’ve had my dealings with ghosts and talking to my dead father is not something I want to go into with Kowalski of all people. 

“Yeah, like I used to get when Ben would come home from work early and would just watch me doing my thing. I turn and I swear to God, Vecchio I see something in the corner of my eye and when I turn it’s gone.” 

“That’s uh...that’s not normal, Stanley.” I laugh, trying to keep my tone light. “That’s too many months of constant darkness if you ask me.”

He laughs, “You’re probably right. Been happening a lot more recently though…” he adds, his voice sounding far away. “Especially when I dance,” I’ve stopped teasing him about the dancing. He’s pretty good at it, truth be told and I know he likes to share how he taught Benny to dance. “I close my eyes and it’s like he’s there right next to me, in my arms and we just dance nice and slow. Freaked me out the first time but I figure what the hell right? If I have to go crazy in my old age, I might as well go crazy dancing with my dead husband.” 

I’m not sure what to say to that. It hurts and we miss him. We both know it so our calls sometimes get a little weird but that’s ok. He’s up there in the snowy North by himself, the least I can do is listen to him lose his mind a little bit more every year. It was, after all, my bullet that ultimately took Benny from Kowalski but I know he doesn’t blame me. I do obviously but he never has. 

I never understood it until he called me that first year. Benny’s 56th birthday. He’d been in the ground less than six months. He never woke up from the surgery. 

We’d all been prepared for it. Benny being Benny had called us and warned us what might happen when they attempted to remove it. It had just come about so suddenly though. He’d been knocked on his ass by a dumb kid resisting arrest and it had shifted, paralysing him. It was either surgery or a slow death lying in a hospital bed being spoon-fed for the rest of his life. We all knew which option he would pick. ‘I’ve had a good life, Ray,’ he’d said. ‘It’s alright.' So we’d all been prepared for the worst. You’re never really prepared though, not really.

Kowalski had called me on his birthday that year. After fifteen years with Benny, ten of which he was married to the guy, I fully expected him to be angry, upset, yell at me, blame me but all he wanted was to have a drink and a chat. Reminisce about the good old days. Stella had hoped he would move back to the US but Kowalski had married Canada when he’d married Benny. He had a life up there and Benny had left him everything so in his mind it was home and he wasn’t going to leave it. So we call each other and remember. Most of the time it's good, real nice, we've shared a lot of laughs over the past five years. I asked him once why he never blamed me and he just said, 'If you hadn't have shot him I would have never gotten to marry him.' I got it then. I’m glad Benny’s sister is up there though, having her kids close by helps him and the dogs. He’s obsessed with those dogs. Never would I have pegged the polack for sled racing though. He’s good too. 

The phone calls became a habit and then a tradition. Either I call or he does. It’s gotta be hard for him but he never says anything. “Speaking of ghosts, that reminds me about the time me and Benny went to his father’s cabin. Did I ever tell you about that?” I ask with a smile. 

“How do ghosts remind you of that, Vecchio?” I can hear the forced scowl from here. 

“Stanley Raymond Kowalski-Fraser, have you ever known me not to follow through on a story about Benny huh?” 

He laughs at that. “Alright, whatever makes you happy, Vecchio,” he’s back with me, I can hear it in his voice. 

I launch into the story of how Benny had banged his head so hard I thought he was going to die and how he kept talking to himself but I definitely heard him say ‘Dad’ a few times. We laugh about it because Benny always was a bit of a freak and he tells me he definitely remembers walking in on Ben having full blown conversations with an empty room. It helps Stan relax a bit, I can hear it in his voice and he’s grateful I’m sure. 

Sometimes, there’s no story I can share that helps though. We’re touching sixty now and sometimes I can hear how god damned tired he is. Nothing I say helps him when he gets like that. It’s only been really bad a couple of times. That first phone call and last year. Last year was the first time I’d heard him cry. Just about broke me in half to listen to him. I pulled in the big guns for that one, Stella was like the Kowalski whisperer or something. I never asked what she said but we’d ended the call on a good note, laughing about a voodoo case he and Benny had worked on back at the 2-7. Will never forget the crying though. I worry about it some nights.

He starts telling about the time he and Benny ended up in a sub in lake superior and how he’d been convinced that Ben, as he calls him, had been talking to someone else even though there were only two of them in the sub. 

We laugh about it and drink some more and the conversation gets easier. We share memories of the stupid freaky shit that just seemed to be attracted to Benton Fraser and how we were just along for the ride and then we share memories of the man himself. 

“I’m glad, you know,” he says suddenly in another lull in our conversation.

“Of what?”

He sighs. “That it was quick. No suffering, just done.” 

“Yeah,” I say, taking a long pull of my beer. “Being unable to jump off rooftops would’ve killed him.” 

Stan chuckles. “I would’ve not heard the end of it.”

“The man could talk that’s for sure. God what I wouldn’t give to hear an Inuit story right now,” I smile. 

“Yeah. I miss him too,” Stan says quietly. He clears his throat. “I uh, I gotta get up early tomorrow, taking Maggie’s kids out sledding. Showing them how it’s done.”

“No worries, Stanley. You take care. Same time next year, don’t be a stranger.” 

“Sure, thanks. Say hi to Stella for me.” 

The line goes quiet and I let out a long sigh as I finish my beer. The chair beside me gives a little creak and out of the corner of my eye I swear I see something move but I don’t look, I never look. Raising my bottle I smile. “Happy birthday, Benny.” The moment passes and I get up to go find Stella. The woman really needs to learn to relax.

****.

Up in the winter of Canada, in a warm cabin, a former Chicago flatfoot smiles softly as he dances barefoot with easy grace around the room as though guiding an invisible partner. His eyes open and shine brightly at his whole world. It’s a world only he can see, a world of light, of warm memories only he remembers and of love. So much love. 

One day, not too far in the future, he knows he’ll stay there and they’ll dance forever but for a little while, gazing upon that dazzling smile and the bluest eyes he’s ever seen, it’s enough to let the rest of the world drift away with the snow. 


End file.
